Gamescom: Gran Turismo 5 Preview

Kazunori Yamauchi loves cars. No surprise for a man who's dedicated what's coming up to fifteen years of his life slaving over their digital reproductions, but it's something that tells in the smile that flickers across his face as he runs through the latest additions to Gran Turismo 5's swelling garage. The series may have been criticised in the past for its clinical and detached stylings, but make no mistake; this is a game that's founded on passion.

Gran Turismo 5's new batch of cars tell its own story. There are the expected supercars and supersaloons – with the Pagani Zonda R, the Subaru Impreza Sedan and the Lexus IS-F Racing Concept three that have made the cut – but it's another trio of cars that really stir Yamauchi.

First there's the Ferrari 330 P4, a jaw-droppingly beautiful sportscar. It formed part of a staged photo finish as the Scuderia bagged a 1-2-3 at 1967's Daytona 24 Hours race (proving that rigging races isn't something new to the team), and went on to trail home Dan Gurney and A.J Foyt's Ford GT40 Mk IV at that year's Le Mans. That car's also here, as is another surprise addition, the Jaguar XJ13. It was built with the intent to contend at Le Mans but never actually made it to the race track, and there's only one prototype in existence.

Gran Turismo 5 at IGN.com The inclusion of the cars says a lot, and it's not only a testament to the breadth of Gran Turismo 5's garage but also to its passion for motor sport. 1967, incidentally, was the same year that Papyrus chose to immortalise in its 1998 classic Grand Prix Legends – in their eyes it was the last time that motorsport was pure, before the advent of sponsors turned the cars into speeding billboards and before wings ruined the clean lines of the cars. That's abundantly clear in Gran Turismo 5's classic sports cars, which look nothing short of phenomenal.

They're also a handful on the track, as a drive in the 330 P4 around the newly announced Monza circuit proves. Slowing the car with it's hulking mass and steel brakes is something that's just as much of a challenge as getting it to the apex of a corner, as the back-end dances about and the front tires struggle to keep adhesion. It proves the refinements made to Gran Turismo's already brilliant handling work.

What's being pushed right now though is what's off the track, and here Gran Turismo 5 has a rich feature list. Alongside the A-Spec mode – which, true to previous games, is where the driving career takes place – there's B-Spec, something that's appeared before in the series but that has now been fully fleshed out.

Here, it's possible to have up to six drivers, and your job is to manage them. In-game, that means maintaining their physical and mental conditions, issuing commands to get them to speed up, slow down or attack the driver in front. It's represented in three different views; there's the command view where the action's restricted to a small window while the rest of the screen is taken up with telemetry read-outs. Another view offers up the live timings, with sector times fully broken down and a final one shows the racing off in full-screen glory.